Municipal employees in this port city ended their three-day strike Friday after being assured they will receive their June wages, officials said. Haifa, which is $37.5 million in debt, obtained a four-year loan for $14.5 million from the Interior Ministry to pay its 5,000 workers.

A U.S. Navy launch carrying sailors on shore leave back to the aircraft carrier Saratoga capsized off the Israeli port of Haifa early today, killing one and injuring at least 27, Israeli army radio said. The radio said the Israeli navy was still conducting rescue operations. Between 70 to 100 people had been on the launch, it said. The launch was on its way to the Saratoga, which is part of the U.S. 6th Fleet, the radio said.

A suicide bombing at a busy bus stop--the second such attack on this northern port city in a week--has shaken Haifa's confidence in itself as a rare example of Arabs and Jews living in relative harmony. The attack came as Haifans--and Israelis--struggled to lift the gloomy sense of siege imposed by a string of suicide attacks and celebrate the start of the joyous, eight-day festival of Hanukkah. The only person killed Sunday was the bomber, Nimr abu Sayfien, 20, from the northern West Bank.

Israeli police Thursday said they have arrested a mentally deranged Jew on suspicion of desecrating graves in the central town of Lod, the latest in a wave of attacks on Jewish cemeteries in Europe and Israel. Israel Radio said the 24-year-old suspect is believed to have smashed flowerpots on graves in a Lod military and a civilian cemetery. His name was not disclosed, and police described him as insane.

A hand grenade exploded Saturday night near a crowded sidewalk cafe and toy store in downtown Haifa, wounding at least 25 people, including seven members of one family, police and witnesses said. Fifteen Arabs were detained for questioning after the explosion in the center of this northern port city, police reported. Hospital officials said that Dan Meir, 8, lost parts of both legs and suffered head injuries, and his 2-year-old brother Yonathan was wounded in the stomach.

To applause and the jubilant sound of a ram's horn, a ship brought 477 Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel in the first such trip by sea since the wave of immigration began two years ago. Four tugboats pulled the golden-hulled Greek vessel Mediterranean Sky into Haifa Bay as immigrants on the deck sought out relatives and loved ones gathered on shore.

U.S. Navy jets, while on training exercises over the Mediterranean on Wednesday, shot down two Libyan MIG-23 fighters when the Libyans appeared to threaten the U.S. warplanes, American officials said. The incident, which occurred about noon local time (2 a.m. PST) in international airspace, comes at a time of increasing U.S. hostility toward Libya over that nation's construction of what U.S. officials charge is a chemical weapons plant near the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

Bowing to public pressure and an almost total boycott of advance ticket sales, the Haifa Municipal Theater on Tuesday canceled two scheduled performances by British actress Vanessa Redgrave, whose years of militant support for the Palestine Liberation Organization led many here to view her as an enemy of Israel and anti-Semitic.